Reine's Serendipitous Springtime
This spring has been spent sneezing, spending, and cooking! I still absolutely adore central markets and the farmers markets, and now go to both, because it's fun and the produce is amazing.There is great joy in unplanned purchasing (of ingredients mind you, not impulse buying!), so I end up with goodies like heirloom carrots and blood oranges to play with.First up, to get the silliness out of the way, there are two neverfail ingredients that can help out in a pinch - the first, as you know, is bacon. The second, is tomato sauce. One day, I had no dinner prepared whatsoever, and managed to create a chicken, bacon, tomato pasta that was somewhat decent! >_> Free parsley also helps :)
For the real spring deal, I found bunches of amazing multicoloured heirloom carrots, so had to buy some to ensure I was getting enough beta-carotene (I don't like carrots, but I feed my body the nutrients it requires). It turned into a massive julienned carrot salad, which was awesome with fennel, asparagus, rocket, witlof, blood orange, corn, red onion. Plus it looked gorgeous!
Heirloom carrot, fennel, rocket, corn, blood orange salad
Real spring pasta involves fresh handmade beetroot pasta, with beef, pesto, and goat curd. The original version (that I didn't take a picture of) had parsley instead of zucchini.
Beetroot pasta with beef, zucchini, goat curd, rocket and pistachio pesto
With the abundance of blood oranges, I wanted to do something other than spam it in my salads. So I went from the idea of blood orange juice, to blood orange jellies! Done in a similar style to my Virtual Valentine, it has two layers, with macerations of goodness. I'm not sure whether I just used too much gelatin (the wobbliness was right), but it did have a weird aftertaste. The blood orange juice remained cold during this process; I dissolved the gelatin in boiling water, though for next time, I would make a separate batch of boiling juice to ensure I get the full flavour instead of having it diluted. There were suspended chopped strawberries and mint, and the garnish layer was suspended in place using "lemonade" jelly - lemon, water and sugar to taste.
Because of how pretty they are, here's a lot of pictures!
"Bespoke cocktail" - Blood orange jelly, strawberry, mint
I also ran into some mixed whole pepper in one of my nearby shops, so I had to play with them, even though I'm not a pepper fan. Whole white, whole black, and some funny looking long peppers. So I slow poached chicken breast in olive oil, fresh rosemary, lemon, sea salt and pepper. It smelled great and the flavour actually got into the chicken, which I was happy about. I used the end result in a salad as a great refreshing lunch.
Lemon, pepper, rosemary poached chicken and quinoa salad
I then replicated this dish with just salt and pepper roasted chicken which was just as tasty and so much more moist. I also used tomatoes instead of capsicum, and had plenty of asparagus because it's in season and super cheap!
Now onto planned pasta dishes. There was some fresh squid ink pasta, so I bought that and wanted to make a creamy seafood pasta. I wanted it to have great depth of flavour, so I decided to overload on absolutely everything and my ingredient list ended up being: onion, garlic, butter, white wine, corn water, whole peppers, dill, chives, parsley, celery, carrot, corn, fennel, prawns, cockles, mussels, salmon, lingfish, mullet, snapper bone, creme fraiche, parmesan. I separated the prawn heads from bodies, so that I could cook them for a long time. As a stroke of genius, I also popped the shellfish in when the base of my sauce was only half done, and fished out the meat (pun intended) as they opened (some of those cockles were very stubborn!) so that I could cook down the juices. I had to pick out my snapper bone, peel the prawns, and get rid of the large herbs, and when it was ready I put a whole tub of creme fraiche in and let it mix.
Oh it was gorgeous and super fishy, but that's what I wanted as I've never had a restaurant make one so fishily rich.
I also managed to obtain some white truffles as they've just gone on the market! They were so crazy expensive that I cried a little on the inside. The black truffles I bought were $3000/kg, but these white ones were... $7000/kg!!! That's more than double! So I went way over budget (not that I have a food budget) and bought some. And made eggs! Lots of eggs. Fried, scrambled, all the truffle!
The egg is a little whiter than normal as I used the whites of 2 eggs and the yolk of 1, as I originally wanted the 2nd yolk to sit "in" the bed of white scramble, but the toast I had didn't work for it... so I ended up exploding the yolk afterwards (lesson learned: don't let yolk sit in a bowl by itself for too long; it sticks then breaks upon trying to pick it up).
And of course, cheese and truffle! My makeshift cheese plate with 2 proper cheese plate cheeses, plus an olive stuffed buffalo mozzarella. Gruyere and some French washed rind cheese. I love washed rind cheeses! Is white truffle worth it? Yes, but only once per lifetime XD
And new season South Australian strawberries have just been harvested, so my crazy idea of juicing strawberries was put to the test! Turns out, strawberries really don't juice well. But I had to make handmade strawberry milkshake for the hot weather! Plus I kept the pulp for yoghurt and muesli!
Before: strawberry "nectar" and milk. After: After some yoghurt and stirring, voila!
And lastly, duck and carrots take 2. Roasted this time, in chicken fat (cause I was cooking my salt and pepper chicken just before), hence the carrots look blistered. I bought pre-marinated Mongolian duck, which was pretty tasty!
All the blood oranges!
So I have just completed 6 days of no coffee, just cause. Turns out day 2 is when the body suffers some crazy withdrawal - I had a pounding headache for most of the day.And of course, here is my obligatory post of coffee:
Bar 9 Central also recently opened in the city, so now I can get my baby Bar 9 fix easily! Instead of trekking or bussing to the super crowded cafe. This was a beetroot, fennel, blood orange salad with radish, rocket, and some other things. The rocket and radish burned me, as always, but it was tasty!
I also managed to finally visit Jack Ruby, this restaurant/bar place which has an American theme to it, so ceviche, tacos and actual Amercian food galore. I loved my food, but some other people didn't - apparently the philly cheesesteak was average. I loved all that I ordered, though the ceviche was not what I had expected since in America I had some amazing cheap ceviche, plus I am great at making my own. This one was creamy, partially due to the avocado, but it was still nice, and the corn chips were tasty. The deep fried shrimp was fun and delicious but too spicy, even without the sauce! Only because I have no chilli tolerance.
Mac and cheese balls. Super yummy! So I have had mac and cheese toastie, mac and cheese balls, mac and cheese fingers, but I have not had mac and cheese by itself!
And a lamb taco in the background, fried chicken taco in the foreground. The fried chicken one was spicy but oh so good! I love tacos like these! Lots of exclamation marks!
Apart from eating out, yes, I have been doing more of my own cooking. It's just been mostly ordinary stuff though. This is a new experiment of mine, chicken breast with sea salt, pepper, rosemary, lemon and olive oil. I will throw it in the oven for who knows how long, then put it in things, like salad or quinoa or a sandwich, whatever it is that I actually have in my pantry tomorrow.
Now for the blood oranges! I bought 3 kilos of blood oranges cause they were cheap ($2.50kg) and I've been meaning to make blood orange jellies for a few weeks now, but never could be bothered. I tried taking pictures of them but it doesn't work at night, so here is a random "bespoke" cocktail I made - blood orange, strawberry, mint. I love blood orange juice!
And here it is again in a martini glass :)
Yay for pretty things!